Answering God's Call
Elizabeth Bureman felt God called upon her to serve and spent the better part of last year doing so.
Bureman, 24, of Butler returned July 8 from the World Race, an extended mission trip in which teams typically serve in 11 countries in 11 months.
World Race is a ministry of Adventures in Missions, an international, interdenominational missions group based in Georgia.
As part of World Race, participants live out of a backpack, survive on a limited budget and serve in various aspects.
From last August through this July, Bureman's team visited Ireland, Romania, Croatia, Turkey, Israel, Kenya, Uganda, Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia.
About 80 World Racers launched at the same time as Bureman. That group was further divided into two squads and then six- or seven-member teams that served together, she said.
Her team's first destination was Northern Ireland, where the team worked with a vacation Bible school program in Coleraine.
The next stop was an isolated village in Romania called Ville Tecii, where they stayed with a Gypsy family.
The group served by doing things like cleaning carpets and peeling potatoes in addition to spending time with the local children. Most of them lacked basic necessities, and many were responsible for their younger siblings, Bureman said.
"There's a community of nomad families that live on the outskirts of town, and they're ostracized by most of the community," Bureman said. "We were making sure they knew they were loved."
The team next visited four cities in Croatia, mainly to make contacts for future World Races, Bureman said.
The next destination, Turkey, is a dangerous place to be a Christian, Bureman said.
Their tour guide introduced them as backpackers as they explored the country, staying in a different place almost every night for three weeks.
They were able to speak with natives and help out at an underground church there, she said.
"It's a reality that people who are Christians have been killed by the Turkish military or Islamic extremists in that country," she said. "It puts you on edge."
The next month in Israel, the team helped teach English and volunteered. They also visited Biblical sites, including Hezekiah's Tunnel in Jerusalem.
"Seeing the Bible as an actual historical document was something that I had never thought to do before," she said. "Seeing it in that new context was really neat for me."
The itinerary was subject to change at any time, Bureman said.
The group first visited Kenya in January and was sent back in March, so the group actually went to 10 countries total instead of eleven, Bureman said.
Their contact person was working to establish a church, so they helped him spread the word in town."By the time we went back in March, he'd already found a building and had a small congregation of six to 10 people," Bureman said.A few weeks later in Uganda, the team worked with Compassion International, a Christian child sponsorship ministry.In April, the team arrived in Thailand and the women partnered with Self Help and Empowerment, or SHE, a nonprofit Christian group dedicated to helping women and children escape from the country's commercial sex trade.In May, they were partnered with a coffee shop in Vietnam that hosts conversation nights where people come to practice English with native speakers.During the last month of the trip in June, the team was assigned to create content for a local church's website in Cambodia.Bureman was responsible for raising more than $14,000 to cover the cost of food, lodging, and air, land and sea travel, administrative costs and training.Bureman said she received generous donations from friends, relatives, her church family at First United Methodist Church in Butler and from the congregation of Unionville Presbyterian Church.To keep supporters updated, Bureman took a netbook with basic Internet and word processing capabilities and maintained a personal blog.The trip was a spiritual journey as well as missionary work, said her mother Diane Bureman."I wanted to know if she felt like God had called her and how she'd come to that conclusion," she said. "She had explored that, and clearly, it was a call from God."Her parents were concerned but trusted in God, Diane Bureman said."I just felt that if God truly did call her, he could provide for her financially and safety-wise," she said. "It was a spiritual leap of faith for me."Bureman graduated with a history degree in 2008 from the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Va.She hopes to move to Denver in the future, but for now is spending time at home with family and friends.In serving others, Bureman said she experienced a great deal of personal growth."This year has taught me that love is a concept that, in the purest sense, is selfless; there is nothing of you in it," she said."To truly love, you have to leave your motives and your desires and the things you want behind and you have to embrace this other person, this other culture, this other community wholeheartedly."For information on the World Race, visit www.theworldrace.org.
